


Between Dreams and Waking

by scavengerscorner (idrilhadhafang)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Not so imaginary friends, Out of Context Eavesdropping, Soft Ben Solo, Time Skips, Young Ben Solo, Young Rey, miscommunications, sort of AU in a way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:06:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18888685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/scavengerscorner
Summary: In which I go out on a limb and rewrite the Reylo bits.





	1. The Friend and the Saber

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: What can I say? This idea wouldn’t leave me alone.

When Rey’s five years old, she makes a new friend. 

She’s the only one who can see him. Unkar Plutt doesn’t know, and Rey hopes that he’ll make nothing of it, in the end. She’s already scared of him, and she doesn’t want to risk him getting even angrier at her. Ever since Mama and Daddy dropped her off, saying that she’ll somehow be “safer” with Plutt, getting her away from the bad men that Rey’s been only peripherally aware of ever since she was just a little girl...Plutt’s hated her. Rey can only conclude that she’s done something really bad to make Unkar Plutt mad at her. 

So when the boy appears to her, head full of dark curls, Rey can’t help but wonder if she’s seeing things, exactly. 

The boy looks sad. There’s something in his eyes that suggests that he’s seen things that a child shouldn’t see, but he smiles at Rey. “Hi!”

Rey looks up, wipes her eyes — they’re stinging from sand and tears. 

“I’m Ben!” the boy says. “What’s your name?”

Rey sniffles. “Rey.”

The boy looks at her, worried. It’s probably the first time since she arrived with Plutt that anyone’s looked at her like that. “What’s wrong, Rey? Are you sick? Hurt?”

”I want...” She doesn’t feel quite like the little nexu cub that her mother’s affectionately called her. She feels, instead, very much vulnerable. “I want my mommy and daddy.”

”Me too. Hey,” says Ben, “Maybe we could stick together, you and me. ‘Till Mommy and Daddy get back.”

Rey nods. She’s still sad, but she finds she likes Ben. She likes how friendly and nice he is, how he’s kind to her in a way that no one at Niima Outpost has been so far. 

The boy looks around. “Where do you sleep? I can’t see it.”

Rey furrows her brows. “How come?”

The boy shrugs. “I just see you. Can you see where I am?”

Rey shakes her head. 

“Thought so. Can you describe it to me?”

Rey bites her lip. “Well,” she says, “It’s not much. It’s really dusty. Sand gets in your eyes.”

Ben nods. “Doesn’t sound like a great place to sleep. I’m sorry.”

Rey nods. “Not your fault.”

”Maybe we could make a new place?” Ben says, excitedly. 

Luckily, Unkar Plutt is asleep, even as they arrange a new sleeping space, with warm blankets that they’ve improvised from the trades that have gotten scavengers measly portions at best. 

Rey snuggles under the blanket, and smiles at Ben. “I like it. It’s nice and warm.” 

“Good.” Ben sits next to her. “My mommy actually sings to me when I can’t sleep.”

”Can you?” Rey says. “Sing to me, that is?”

Ben does. Rey falls asleep, and for a change, she can’t help but have peaceful dreams. 

***

He shows up in different guises. Sometimes he’s a little boy, sometimes a Big Kid, sometimes a grown-up. He’s still Ben, though. Still overwhelmingly kind to her, and a good buddy. With him, the long nights on Jakku become less lonely. With him, she tells him about dolls she’s made, or news trickling into Niima Outpost (because news always gets into Niima Outpost, one way or another) or anything. She talks about reuniting with Mama and Daddy (Mom and Dad, as the titles start to sound, for lack of a better word, childish) and he talks about that too. He’s been abandoned too. Rey knows. 

It’s when she’s eleven years old that he simply goes away. Rey wonders if it’s just because when you grow up, you outgrow such things. You just forget. She wonders if in a way, puberty’s about shedding your innocence like a snake sheds its skin. 

It would explain a lot. 

“It was just a stupid fantasy,” Unkar sneers, but Rey doesn’t want it to be true. 

***

When she touches the lightsaber eight years later, she sees so many things, but one of the things that stands out is him. Even as the lightning flashes, illuminating the strange figure in armor, she swears, to her shock, that Ben’s face, grown up, is trapped in there. 

“Ben!” she says. “What is this...place?”

The figure — who she can only assume is Ben — says nothing. He advances towards her. 

She’s thrown into another memory, the matter of her abandonment on Jakku, before finding the figure — the same flash of Ben appears over the almost avian mask — in the strange, snowy forest again. She staggers back, overwhelmed by voices, by impressions —

— and she hears a faint voice. “These are your first steps.”

If these are her first steps, she doesn’t want to take them. 

Footsteps. Maz Kanata. Rey turns to look at her. “What was that?” she says, and it occurs to her that she’s genuinely, honest to Ri’ia shaken, because she has never thought that anything could mess with her mind that much. 

“That lightsaber,” Maz says, “Was Luke’s, and his father’s before him, and now it calls to you!”

”I have to get back to Jakku.” Yes. She can hold onto that. She can hold onto just about anything else, but nothing like this. Nothing like the strange horrors that can hide inside a lightsaber in a box. 

“Han told me.” Maz adjusts her almost scavenger-like goggles so they rest on her forehead. “Dear child. I see your eyes. Whoever left you on Jakku — they’re never coming back. But...there’s someone who still could.”

”Luke?” Rey said. “Or...” She trails off. She wonders, absently, if she just made up Ben. If the vision she saw invoked Ben just to scare her. 

Maz looks at her, kindly. “Your Ben is a prisoner of the First Order.”

There’s something about it that sends an ice cold chill through Rey’s blood. Prisoner. What are they doing to him? Are they hurting him? 

She’ll kill them if they are. 

“You can still save your friend,” Maz says. “The saber. Take it.”

Rey swallows. If not for the fact that she wants to save Ben, she wouldn’t have any part of this. 

“Not yet,” she says. “But I’ll keep it close.”

She doubts that she’s ready to use the saber yet. But by the stars, she can at least try. 


	2. Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang is captured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

It’s when the First Order comes out of hyperspace that Kylo Ren feels something all too familiar. As if his emotional state isn’t overall fragile enough thanks to the very idea that he has to kill his own father (as well as earlier, when he had to torture Poe Dameron. He’s just done a great job at hiding that fragility, really). As if he hasn’t felt that frustrating pull to the Light enough. As if...

He knows that presence. When he was a boy, when he was young, he felt it in his dreams. He knows this girl, who’s out on this peaceful planet that’s about to become no more than a junkyard. He can feel her — uncertainty and determination and...caring for him? After all this time? 

He didn’t think that he would actually have someone willing to actually come back for him. Ben Solo is all but forgotten by the galaxy, and deserves to be forgotten. There is only Kylo. 

Even as his shuttle glides through the air, over Maz Kanata’s castle that’s crumbling, falling down with every blast, Kylo can feel her. Shock, terror, but also determination. She doesn’t know he’s Ben Solo. She’ll fight for him nonetheless — and for her friends. 

Of course she will. A good woman to the very end. 

He disembarks, and it’s nothing but pure chaos. It’s dead troopers, just to begin with. Bodies everywhere. Kylo’s not affected by the sight of bodies anymore; the first time that he killed the students at Luke’s Academy, he’d had to go and throw up in the bushes despite Snoke assuring him that yes, he had done the right thing. Now, though...now he can look at the bodies of stormtroopers and not even flinch. 

When he ordered a village ransacked for the map to Skywalker, the villagers killed, he hadn’t flinched either. He had taken lives before. Ordered other people to take them. All in the name of the First Order. 

Sometimes, he thinks, a Knight of Ren can just live too long. 

He takes in his father’s face, which honestly looks like he’s been stabbed. Worse, like Kylo broke his heart. He wishes his father wouldn’t look at him like that. There’s FN-2187, the traitor, wielding a blaster. Kylo can’t help but feel contempt all but squirm inside him like a worm thinking about what exactly the traitor’s done. Traitor to the end. 

There’s Maz — Kylo’s only marginally familiar with her, but familiar with her all the same. And then there’s the girl. Even without her signature Force presence, he knows her. The hair bound in three buns. Just to begin with. 

He doesn’t hesitate, though. Even as his father pleads — honest to stars, pleads — with him to take him instead and leave the others alone. It’s a hell of a sacrifice, Kylo will say that. He’s not adverse to a worthy opponent. Poe, for example. But nothing is going to stop his search for the map. 

Rooting out Skywalker is not just necessary, but righteous and justified, after all. 

He loads them into his ship just in time. By the time the Resistance get there, Kylo Ren is long gone. 

***

It’s in the shuttle that Rey turns to Han. She can still remember the way that Han called Kylo “Ben”, like it was the most natural thing in the galaxy. And the way he looked at Kylo...there wasn’t any true hatred in those eyes. Nothing but love. The sort of love that was almost painful in its intensity. 

“Han,” she says, “Why didn’t you say anything about...you knowing the boy?” That he was Ben, she mentally finishes. Realizing that your not-so-imaginary friend had become twisted and evil...it’s like a nightmare out of childhood but it’s very, very real. 

Han swallows. “Because it’s not really the thing you talk about. It’s not something you can easily describe. I mean...” He breaks off, looks away. Rey remembers how on Takodana he looked like he was going to cry. Seeing Han Solo about to cry is like seeing a god about to cry — it’s confusing, scary. 

“Han,” she begins. “You knew him?”

”He was my son.”

Son. What a word. Coming out of Han Solo’s mouth, it sounds almost like “treasure”. 

“Han,” she says, “I’m so sorry.” Her strange friend, and Han’s son, has gone evil and there’s not a thing she can do about it. 

“Not your fault. Nothing you can help.” Han runs a hand through gray hair. “I wasn’t...embarrassed by him. Stuff like this just hurts.” A beat. “And I didn’t know how you and Big Deal would react. It’s good as admitting what I did, or what I didn’t do.”

”There’s no scenario where it’s your fault,” Rey says. She can’t imagine it. Short of Han doing the unthinkable, she can’t imagine it. 

“I loved him, Rey. But loving...isn’t always enough, is it?” Han sighs. “He was a troubled kid. A little too sensitive to people’s thoughts and emotions. Nightmares. All these things. The occasional tantrum...but I loved him nonetheless. I was practically blinded by how I felt. Now...I wonder what I could have done, or if his mother was right and there was too much Vader in him.”

Rey takes his hand. Han accepts. It dawns on Rey that Han in that moment has utterly lost his tough survivor type image. Instead, he’s vulnerable. Borderline inconsolable. 

“Whatever happens,” Han says, “I’ll look after you however I can. I promise.”

***

Kylo Ren doesn’t think he can actually wreck the cockpit of his shuttle, so he settles for kicking the lower half of the console. It’s something that he’s used as an alternative to choking people — the first time he tried choking someone, the Supreme Leader had rebuked him for it. It doesn’t help that anger inside him can feel like a caged beast straining to get free. 

In a way, his “tantrums” are almost practical. They aren’t as well-equipped as the Empire. They are, in the end, a very rag-tag band. All coming together to make a better galaxy. 

Stars does he want to wreck the cockpit of his shuttle right now. How dare his mother even suggest that? How dare his father even agree? At this point, Kylo wonders if they even wanted to be parents, if they had had him just because they had forgotten to use protection or something —

He hates them. Hates them both. How dare they try and justify everything they put him through by suggesting he was evil from the start —

On the other hand, is a Vader comparison really an insult? Vader, after all, was the noblest of his family. Able to, after all, survive the betrayal of a “friend”, to take a situation where he was all but deprived of so much thanks to his “friend’s” sadism, and turn it to his advantage. A brave man, if nothing else. 

Kylo takes a deep breath. In a way, he is only becoming what his mother prophesied he would be. What his father’s agreeing with. Perhaps it’s the only thing he’s good at. As always.

Perhaps it’s too late to become otherwise. 

They head towards the Finalizer, and Kylo knows he won’t take pleasure in what Snoke will most likely order him to do next. He has never enjoyed torture. The first time that he did one he had nightmares, and even the tortures after that...though they are a job, he takes no pleasure in them. He’s gotten used to it, the way he’s gotten used to the smell of burning village and the sight of corpses. 

From there, he thinks as the shuttle parks in the Finalizer’s hangar, he’ll figure out what to do from there. 


End file.
